Old Clifton sits where Chase Creek runs into the San Francisco River, and the copper town’s landmarks fill this map. You’ll find the Park Avenue Bridge, the Clifton Casa Grande Building, the Greenlee County Courthouse, the Clifton Train Depot, the Greenlee County Historical Society Museum and the Clifton Public Library printed here, along with Clifton Peak and Smelter Hill.
Clifton is in Greenlee County, and it’s the county seat.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of Clifton Peak and Smelter Hill comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Park Avenue Bridge and the Clifton Casa Grande Building are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. Clifton had 3,933 people at the 2020 census.
A copper town on two rivers
Mining for gold and silver began in the area in 1864, copper followed in 1872, and Clifton was founded in 1873. The next year the Longfellow Copper Mining Company, started by the brothers Henry and Charles Lesinsky, built a smelter where Chase Creek empties into the San Francisco River. Henry Lesinsky also built the house now known as the Clifton Casa Grande, in 1874, on Park Avenue, and it went on the National Register in 1979. The Lesinskys sold out to the Arizona Copper Company in 1882. Nearby, at Morenci, is the Morenci Mine, the largest copper mining operation in North America, and its owner, Freeport-McMoRan, is the biggest employer in Clifton too.
When Greenlee County was created in 1909, named for Mason Greenlee, an early settler around Clifton, the town was chosen as its seat, and it has been the county seat ever since. The county’s first board of supervisors met in January 1911 in the Hampton Block on Park Avenue, which housed the county offices until the Greenlee County Courthouse was built on 5th Street in 1912.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Mountain Ave, Markeen Rd, Cemetery Rd, McDowell Rd, Shannon Rd, Stadium Dr, Copper Verde Ln, Coronado Blvd, Corral Rd, Table Top Rd, Antelope Rd, Mountain Lion Dr.
More street names, A to Z
Back Country Byway, Buckhorn Rd, Coronado Trl, Falcon Rd, Lakin Dr, River Rd, Substation Rd.
The townsite
In 1990 the National Register listed 37 acres at the meeting of Chase Creek and the San Francisco River as the Clifton Townsite Historic District, a largely intact part of a copper town that developed between 1870 and 1930. It takes in 41 contributing buildings in the Prairie School, Late Victorian and Mission or Spanish Revival styles. The Park Avenue Bridge, a through truss built in 1917 and 1918, carries Park Avenue over the San Francisco River and was for a long time the one link between the east and west sides of town. Its page calls it significant as the only pinned Parker vehicular truss in Arizona.
Along Chase Creek Street, Eagle Hall was built in 1913 by Antonio and Ambrose Spezia, the most prominent businessmen on Chase Creek. It’s now home to the Greenlee County Historical Society and its museum. Also on Chase Creek Street, the Clifton Union Hall of 1916 is one of the few places where Cesar Chavez is known to have spoken for a union other than his own. The Clifton Train Depot, built in 1913, now serves as the town’s visitor center.
The Clifton Cliff Jail was blasted out of solid rock in 1881 by a stonemason the Lesinskys hired, and its first inmate was the builder himself, after he celebrated his pay a little too loudly in town. Beside it stands the Number 8, nicknamed Copperhead, which in 1897 was the first baby-gauge locomotive in Arizona and once hauled ore from the Metcalf mines. In South Clifton, the Mares Bluff Veterans Memorial carries more than 2,000 replica dog tags for veterans from World War I to Afghanistan and Iraq. The town page adds one more surprise: snow has been recorded here in only fourteen years since 1892.
This Clifton map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Clifton home, from Chase Creek Street to Smelter Hill, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Clifton map.
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